We're going to reach Pluto for the first time in history today — here's how to watch

When it comes to landmark achievements in space exploration, today will be a date for the history books as the day humanity reached Pluto for the first time.

If everything goes according to plan, a NASA spacecraft, called New Horizons, will fly by Pluto at 12.49 pm BST / 7:49 am ET. New Horizons is the first spacecraft in history to ever visit Pluto, and it's been a long time coming after 9 years in space.

So, you might have to get up a little earlier than usual, but if you want to celebrate Pluto with the rest of the world, you can by checking out the live feed below.

It's important to note that the countdown coverage will not include any live feed of the spacecraft moving by Pluto because we have no telescope strong enough to see the tiny piano-sized spacecraft in enough detail. And the spacecraft is about 4.5 light hours from Earth, so its coverage of the flyby will take at least 4.5 hours to reach us.

Pictures of Pluto taken by New Horizons:

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New Horizons' Pluto mission

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We're going to reach Pluto for the first time in history today — here's how to watch

IN SPACE - JULY 15: In this handout provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Backlit by the sun, Plutos atmosphere rings its silhouette like a luminous halo in this image taken by NASAs New Horizons spacecraft around midnight EDT on July 15, and released July 23, 2015. New Horizons passed by Pluto July 14, closing to a distance of about 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers). This global portrait of the atmosphere was captured when the spacecraft was about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Pluto and shows structures as small as 12 miles across The 1,050-pound piano sized probe was launched January 19, 2006 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, (Photo by NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI via Getty Images)

IN SPACE - JULY 14: In this handout provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), A newly discovered mountain range lies near the southwestern margin of Plutos Tombaugh Regio (Tombaugh Region), situated between bright, icy plains and dark, heavily-cratered terrain. This image was acquired by New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, 2015 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers) and sent back to Earth on July 20, 2015. Features as small as a half-mile (1 kilometer) across are visible.. The 1,050-pound piano sized probe was launched January 19, 2006 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, (Photo by NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI via Getty Images)

Pluto's largest moon Charon

Image Credit: NASA-JHUAPL-SwRI

This July 13, 2015, image of Pluto and Charon is presented in false colors to make differences in surface material and features easy to see. It was obtained by the Ralph instrument on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, using three filters to obtain color information, which is exaggerated in the image. These are not the actual colors of Pluto and Charon, and the apparent distance between the two bodies has been reduced for this side-by-side view.

Image Credit: NASA/APL/SwRI

One of the final images taken before New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto on 14 July 2015. (Photo via NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

LAUREL, MD - JULY 14: In this handout provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Alice Bowman New Horizons mission operations manager, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), left, New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, CO., and NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate John Grunsfeld unveil the last and sharpest Â image of Pluto captured before closest approach of the New Horizons spacecraft during a media briefing moderated by NASA Senior Public Affairs Officer Dwayne Brown, right, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. New Horizons spacecraft is nearing its July 14 fly-by when it will close to a distance of about 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers). The 1,050-pound piano sized probe, which was launched January 19, 2006 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is traveling 30,800 mph as it approaches. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)

IN SPACE - JULY 11: In this handout provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the dwarf planet Pluto is shown at distance of about 2.5 million miles July 11, 2015. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is nearing its July 14 flyby when it will close to a distance of about 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers). The 1,050-pound piano sized probe, which was launched January 19, 2006 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is traveling 30,800 mph as it approaches. (Photo by NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI via Getty Images)

IN SPACE - JULY 11: In this handout provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the dwarf planet Pluto (R) and Charon are shown July 11, 2015. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is nearing its July 14 flyby when it will close to a distance of about 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers). The 1,050-pound piano sized probe, which was launched January 19, 2006 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is traveling 30,800 mph as it approaches. (Photo by NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI via Getty Images)

Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft as it approaches Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, in July 2015. (Photo via NASA)

A view of Pluto and Charon as they would appear if placed slightly above Earth's surface and viewed from a great distance. (Photo via NASA)

In this artist's rendering, Pluto's largest moon Charon rises over the frozen south pole surface of Pluto, casting a faint silvery luminescence across the distant planetary landscape. (Photo by JHUAPL/SwRI via NASA)

This map of Pluto, made from images taken by the LORRI instrument aboard New Horizons, shows a wide array of bright and dark markings of varying sizes and shapes. The elongated dark area informally known as “the whale,” along the equator on the left side of the map, is one of the darkest regions visible to New Horizons. It measures some 1,860 miles (3,000 kilometers) in length. Continuing to the right, along the equator, we see the four mysterious dark spots that have so intrigued the world, each of which is hundreds of miles across. Meanwhile, the whale’s “tail,” at the left end of the dark feature, cradles a bright donut-shaped feature about 200 miles (350 kilometers) across. (Photo viaNASA-JHUAPL-SWRI)

IN SPACE - JULY 8: In this handout provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the dwarf planet Pluto (R) and it's largest moon Charon is shown at distance of about 3.7 million miles from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft July 8, 2015. The craft is nearing its July 14 flyby when it will close to a distance of about 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) from Pluto. The 1,050-pound piano sized probe, which was launched January 19, 2006 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is traveling 30,800 mph as it approaches. The color information in the image, obtained earlier in the mission from instruments, has been added. (Photo by NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI via Getty Images)

This image of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, was taken by the Ralph color imager aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on April 9 and downlinked to Earth the following day. It is the first color image ever made of the Pluto system by a spacecraft on approach. The image is a preliminary reconstruction, which will be refined later by the New Horizons science team. Clearly visible are both Pluto and the Texas-sized Charon. The image was made from a distance of about 71 million miles (115 million kilometers)-roughly the distance from the Sun to Venus. At this distance, neither Pluto nor Charon is well resolved by the color imager, but their distinctly different appearances can be seen. As New Horizons approaches its flyby of Pluto on July 14, it will deliver color images that eventually show surface features as small as a few miles across.

A Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket carrying the New Horizons spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral in Florida, Thursday, January 19, 2006. The New Horizons spacecraft is bound for the planet Pluto to map surface composition and temperatures, and examine Pluto's atmosphere. It will take 9 years for the spacecraft to reach the planet Pluto. (Photo by Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel/MCT via Getty Images)

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, UNITED STATES: As photographers follow with their camera lenses, the New Horizons spacecraft atop an Atlas V rocket, disappears into the clouds 19 January 2006 at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Following two days of delays, the spacecraft is on a trailblazing probe to Pluto, at the solar system's outermost limits. AFP PHOTO/ Bruce Weaver (Photo credit should read BRUCE WEAVER/AFP/Getty Images)

CAMBRIDGE, MA - DECEMBER 10: Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary sciences at MIT who is part of a team working on a NASA mission to Pluto. This is a globe of the solar system. (Photo by Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

UNSPECIFIED - JANUARY 17: American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, the ninth planet in our solar system, on 18 February 1930. Many key questions about Pluto, its moon Charon, and the outer fringes of our solar system await close-up observations. A proposed NASA mission called New Horizons, depicted in this artist's concept, would use miniature cameras, radio science experiments, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers and space plasma experiments to study Pluto and Charon, map their surface compositions and temperatures, and examine Pluto's atmosphere in detail. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, UNITED STATES: Engineers from Johns Hopkins University check out NASA's New Horizons spacecraft 04 November 2005 in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, Florida in preparation for its mid-January 2006 launch aboard an Atlas V rocket. The New Horizons will be the first mission to the planet Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, the journey taking about nine years. Pluto was discovered in 1930 at a distance of some 6.4 billion kilometers (three billion miles) from the sun in the heart of the Kuiper Belt -- a zone beyond Neptune 4.5-7.5 billion kilometers (2.8-4.6 billion miles) from the sun, which is estimated to include more than 35,000 objects of more than 100 kilomters (65 miles) in diameter: the remnants of the sun's accretion ring of matter from which all the planets were formed. AFP PHOTO/Bruce WEAVER (Photo credit should read BRUCE WEAVER/AFP/Getty Images)

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, UNITED STATES: Engineers from Johns Hopkins University check out NASA's New Horizons spacecraft 04 November 2005 in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, Florida in preparation for its mid-January 2006 launch aboard an Atlas V rocket. The New Horizons will be the first mission to the planet Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, the journey taking about nine years. Pluto was discovered in 1930 at a distance of some 6.4 billion kilometers (three billion miles) from the sun in the heart of the Kuiper Belt -- a zone beyond Neptune 4.5-7.5 billion kilometers (2.8-4.6 billion miles) from the sun, which is estimated to include more than 35,000 objects of more than 100 kilomters (65 miles) in diameter: the remnants of the sun's accretion ring of matter from which all the planets were formed. AFP PHOTO/Bruce WEAVER (Photo credit should read BRUCE WEAVER/AFP/Getty Images)

A Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket carrying the New Horizons spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral in Florida, Thursday, January 19, 2006. The New Horizons spacecraft is bound for the planet Pluto to map surface composition and temperatures, and examine Pluto's atmosphere. It will take 9 years for the spacecraft to reach the planet Pluto. (Photo by Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel/MCT via Getty Images)

The New Horizons spacecraft atop an Atlas V rocket lifts off 19 January 2006 at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The spacecraft is on a trailblazing probe to Pluto, at the solar system's outermost limits, following two days of delays AFP PHOTO/Bruce Weaver (Photo credit should read BRUCE WEAVER/AFP/Getty Images)

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At its closest approach, New Horizons is intended to pass within 7,600 miles of Pluto at a speed of 30,8000 miles per hour. At such breakneck speeds, the spacecraft will only have a few hours to collect as much scientific information on the geography and composition of Pluto as it can.

That means that, at the time of its closest approach, New Horizons will be too busy to send a signal to Earth, confirming that the mission was a success. So, that crucial message — letting scientists know if the spacecraft's flyby took place without incident — should come in later on Tuesday at 1.53 am BST / 8:53 pm ET, according to the BBC.

"That [message] is going to be a very highly anticipated even because it's going to be sort of putting the cherry on top," said Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons mission, said in a NASA news briefing on Monday.

NASA will stream live coverage of the incoming message starting at 8:30 pm ET Tuesday.

NASA also has a way that you can experience the flyby in real time with their app "Eyes on Pluto." The app uses the calibrations on New Horizons to simulate when and where the spacecraft is in reference to Pluto.

"The picture in picture view shows you where the spacecraft is looking and what its advanced instruments can see," NASA explains. "You can use a 'live' mode to see what New Horizons is doing right now, or preview the flyby of the Pluto System."